New Official ‘The Hobbit’ Photos of Bilbo Baggins and Gandalf the Grey

Thank the elves that Peter Jackson is doing another Tolkien movie. I’m already feeling the hype for The Hobbit after already watching The Fellowship of the Ring extended last week and The Two Towers extended this past week in theaters. Next week is going to conclude with the debut of LOTR Trilogy on Blu-ray and Return of the King extended in theaters on Tuesday, June 28th.

Finally, our first look at the official photos of Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins and Ian McKellen as Gandalf the Grey. Each image for The Hobbit contains Peter Jackson’s comments.

”He fits the ears, and he’s got some very nice feet,” Jackson says of his Bilbo. ”I think he’s got the biggest hobbit feet we’ve had so far. They’re a little bit hard to walk in, but he’s managed to figure out the perfect hobbit gait.”

”He’s in fantastic form,” Peter Jackson says of McKellen. ”In a way, his role in The Hobbit has more technical difficulties than Lord of the Rings did, because he has scenes with 14 smaller characters — obviously the dwarves and the hobbit are shorter… I remember saying to him [laughs], ”Look, this isn’t Waiting for Godot or King Lear. This is The Hobbit. This is the real thing.”

”There’s no way you can pace yourself for shoots like these,” Jackson says. ”When we were going through the schedule for The Hobbit, I felt a terrible drop in my stomach when I saw that we’d be shooting for 254 days. We’re only 12 days short of The Lord of the Rings even though we’re only doing two movies. When I saw that, I had to sort of pick myself up off the floor and carry on.”